A Poker Player’s Guide To Fantasy Football

I funded my first year of college playing Texas hold ’em. Not bigtime, Late Night Poker hold ’em: Online low-stakes tables – up to eight at a time, up six hours a night. Starting off, I thought I was going to be the next Phil Ivey or Daniel Negreanu. Let me tell you, the novelty wears off fast and I burnt out. When it comes down to it, online poker is about grinding out a couple of big blinds/hour. But this isn’t a steady return – some nights you could get “stacked” multiple times, losing a whole buy-in in one hand and ending up down hundreds of big blinds at the end of the night. And of course, some nights you’re the beneficiary and end up stacking someone else. So how does this apply to Fantasy Football? The answer is a a simple but powerful concept: Expected Value.

Expected Value Explained

When you are experiencing swings of +/- 50 blinds/hour on a daily basis, yet your actual rate of return is only 1 or 2 blinds/hour, how can you be sure you’re making the right decisions? This kind of swing is known as variance. You’ve just lost your whole buy-in, but you had aces, and he lucked out on the river with a rubbish hand. But should you have known? Maybe you missed a tell…

Or maybe you made the correct decision with the information you had and simply lost against the odds. This is also termed “getting your money in when you’re ahead” or making a decision with positive Expected Value (+ EV)*. If you consistently make decisions with +EV, you will be successful in the long run. For example: Arsenal assets such as Santi Cazorla, Theo Walcott and Mesut Ozil were overwhelmingly backed to do well in the Gunner’s opening match at home to West Ham. Talk of “Walcott (C) fails”, etc. littered the match day comments. The clamouring for Dimitri Payet and kneejerk transfers began not long after.

I’ll use Hazard as an example, but this applies to every player. I gave the armband to Eden Hazard in Gameweek 1, as with the best information available I was making (in my judgement) a +EV decision. Hazard averaged 6.1 points per appearance last season; in simple terms, I’m expecting a return of 12.2 points from this fixture (for the sake of brevity I’m not going into depth on his stats here). Out of my squad, I was expecting the highest returns from Hazard, and therefore captained him.

As it panned out, Hazard blanked. I only got four points out of the 12.2 I expected. My Actual Value was four points, but my Expected Value was 12.2. I’ve attached a chart (http://i.imgur.com/uVXk6qq.png) illustrating three scenarios that could have happened (over several Gameweeks for ease of illustration).

The first is Negative Actual Value – you make decisions that over the long run are expected to return positive results. Imagine that Hazard has a 70% chance of scoring/assisting in any one match. That means that 30% of the time, he blanks. This was one of those occasions. That doesn’t mean that because he blanked, the decision was incorrect. This is a “bad beat”.

The second is Neutral Actual Value – you were expecting about 12.2 points, and Hazard bagged an assist and a BP. A return of 12 points means your Actual Value and Expected Value closely align – the decision was about as profitable as expected.

The third scenario is Positive Actual Value – Hazard goes on a rampage and comes away with a brace, an assist and maximum BP. Fantastic. However – this was not expected. There was maybe a 5% chance of this outcome. You did better than the information indicates you should have – you flopped the “nuts”, and if you’re on a streak of these results, you’re “running hot”.

Over the course of the season, you expect Actual Value and Expected Value to converge – in the long run, if you are making decisions with Positive Expected Value you will end up with a Positive Actual Value. If you are making decisions with Negative Actual Value, then vice versa.

Conclusion

The lesson here is to ignore the bad beats (when they are bad beats, and not the result of bad decisions), and ignore when you’re running hot (just because Leicester’s Riyad Mahrez scored twice doesn’t make captaining him a +EV decision). Points earned or missed out on don’t retrospectively justify a decision after the fact – make consistently correct decisions with the information available, and you’ll be rewarded in the long run. A word of warning though: there’s a saying in poker that “the long run is longer than you think”. Just try to strap down that knee in the mean-time.

*I’m heavily stretching the actual definition of some of these poker terms to suit FPL; poker nerds please be gentle.

Nice read. Don't forget how apt "tilt" and "bad beats" analogies are on this site as well.

Too many of the Hot Topics and posts over the past 48 hours have ignored the basics of what you are saying and have been cataclysmic in their reactions or have been seeking solace in performing below expectations, instead of the more measured expectations that any poker player would bring to the table.

@Get_in been trying to explain this idea of +EV in FPL terms for years & you've done an exceptional job! (Kinda jealous that you managed this much better than I ever could tbh ;))

Make the most +EV decision every time & *know* whatever the result that you've actually come out ahead points wise.

Example:Last year I captained Aguero away to West Ham.He blanked but, managed 7 SiB in the process. All I could do was smile & shake my head...Right decision, just the wrong result.Because, anytime someone gives you Aguero's Pts x 2 in a match he got 7 attempts on goal is one you're going expect to come out a winner in the long run.

whether FPL or poker, you have to separate the decisions you make from the results you get...if you make every decision you take a "good decision" you'll end up with good results in the long term...against a "normal" or unknown player if you have AA or KK you go all-in...that is the correct decision...the outcome doesn't matter

EVERYBODY suffers from tilt at least to some extent...just recognise when it's happening and stop playing until you calm down...in FPL the same thing happens...I played much better when I stopped reading the chat on this site and recognised that my "inferior" team was good because I got it with very few hits

Based on this approach would you say that bringing in a keeper for courtois such as Adrian therefore automatically gives me a +EV for that place. Therefore is a no brainier with my transfer considering any other move would have element of speculation

I should have typed *over* the long term, I guess?Like if we could somehow make this decision 100x what would be the best choice of the 3?What's going to earn us the most points / is the most +EV play?

So, if we believe using one of our 38 FT's on replacing our keeper for his one-week absence then we should go for #1.If we think another transfer will earn us more points, take #2. Maybe the most +EV play is to stand pat? And if so, #3 is the way to go.

Sorry mate, we're getting caught up in the nuts & bolts rather than this whole EV thing...

Look at the article & see how OP broke down the expected results of his choice...Now, try to apply this thinking to your decision.

Don't just say, I'm going to replace my keeper.Try to actually figure out how many points that's worth.After that, look at a different transfer & what you'd expect to get there. Finally, see what you expect to get from saving the FT.

Anyone else think UFPL would be well served to use the poker model of pay outs? If they paid, say, the top 10% they'd get an awful lot more players in my opinion. £25k to the winner sounds amazing but £0 to second place doesn't hold that much appeal for people who don't have delusions of winning the thing.

Interesting article - I think one key point is 'Do you have all the information needed?' You can look at the average points per game a player scored the previous season, but there's so much more - who else is in the team, have formations/roles within the teams changed, are the player's scores historically better against certain team styles, home/away variation etc. ?

Good work. Two points. First - pedant that I am, apologies - EV is not just gambling theory but a cornerstone of probability theory.

Second your EV is last year's average --- but players & teams both improve or deteriorate. Will Harry Kane get the same average score this year? (technically is last year's average ppg an unbiased estimator of this years points)

"By your reasoning we might naively predict the BPL table will be the same this year as last year"

he didn't at any stage say that you should use last years points-per-game as the only thing you use to predict this seasons results...he was just using that 6.1ppg as an example to make his point about +EV

I think what Get-In is saying is by selecting the better players and capping the best you've got, will give you a better score at the end of the season than not doing so. In other words the manager who capped Mahrez is more likely to continue riskier bets, and lose, than if he played it safe. It's a simple method but is often forgotten in our clamour for success... greed.

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